Pants

I was waiting for a train at Charing Cross last week when my eye was diverted from the departure boards by a large poster. Resplendent in larger than life size glory were a number of gentlemen who weren't wearing very much at all. In fact they were clad solely in the Dolce and Gabbana underwear that the poster was advertising and they clearly weren't strangers to the gym. A caption read "The Italian Rugby Team." I thought this was rather clever, what with the current round of autumn rugby international tests taking place and Dolce and Gabbana being Italian. Then I began to look closer.

I don't know why, but I'd initially assumed that the fine specimens of manhood on display were professional underwear models. This was not the case. All of a sudden I noticed that one of them was Massi, Italy's infamous non-kicking fly half - an undoubtedly talented player but quite unsuited to that particular position on the field. Then I saw Kane Robertson, qualified to play in the Italian team by virtue of his having an Italian grandmother but still a useful try scorer when given the opportunity. I perceived the absence of Castrogiovani from the picture - a stalwart of the Italian scrum, but one of the larger, heavier-built members of the team who probably wouldn't have shown off the designer knickers to their best effect. "Blimey," I thought, "that really is the Italian rugby team!"

At this point I realised that I'd been gazing intently at the poster for a good few minutes amidst the hustle and bustle of the station concourse. My fellow travelers must have thought I was lost in the pleasant contemplation of exposed male flesh, adrift in a sea of beefcake daydreams. Slightly embarrassed, I averted my eyes, even though I knew my mind was on higher things. I was thinking about the maul, the ruck and the drop goal, and how it's not long to go now before the start of the Six Nations, where I shall drink Peroni and positively will Italy to do better than they usually do. I was thinking about how much I enjoy watching rugby, with its potent mix of brain and brawn, tactics, mud, blood, determination and occasional violence. And of course I was thinking how all of this now has an added dimension since Mr Dolce and Mr Gabbana saw fit to reveal to me the hidden wonders beneath the players' team strips ;-)

Ads - bad and dangerous to know?

Here's a modern moral dilemma: if Lloyds TSB actually manage to take over HBOS, should I stop banking with them? You see, Lloyds would then effectively own the Halifax and all their attendant advertising, with the all singing, all dancing staff and Howard crooning about interest rates. The Lloyds adverts are quite good, with their kooky music, distinctive animations and intelligently cool slogan "For the Journey". Looking at the Halifax ones makes me think of corporate team building days gone mad. They fill me with dread rather than the overwhelming urge to invest.

Years ago the husband-to-be and I started a boycott against Tropicana orange juice on the basis of a dodgy advertising campaign. I think it involved singing parrots and it didn't even fall into the "so bad it's good" category. Currently I'm glad that I have good enough eyes to avoid Specsavers, on account of their wanton abuse of the late Edith Piaf. The poor woman had a difficult enough life, without having her latent talent used to flog a two-for-one glasses offer from beyond the grave. Then there are the current crop of commercials for Orange mobile phones, where various people tell us: "I am my mum, I am my best friend, I am my favourite cheese..." and so on. They bring out my cynical side and I think they really should be saying: "I am what this clever scriptwriter told me to say I am." They're all just pretending, however true the statements they're making may be. It's all about created authenticity and stylised identities, which taints the product somewhat in my mind.

There is the argument that there is no such thing as bad publicity and if reading me have a moan about a few firms has made you want to rush out and buy their stuff then fair enough. The ad agencies involved can congratulate themselves on creating phenomenal brand awareness in the online sector (see my previous post about Absolute Radio for a further discussion of these issues). However, if an ad is supposed to be trying to make me want to purchase something, surely it should hold my interest, not make me want to switch off the television. This is even more important in the age of the digital P.V.R. and Sky Plus, where you can record your favourite shows and skip through the commercial breaks at the touch of a button.

So what makes a memorably good advert? Things that are slightly off the wall but not too self consciously madcap seem to work best. Remember the Cadbury's gorilla playing the drums last year? He became must see t.v. in his own right, with people seeking him out on the internet so they could view him whenever they wanted. The same was true of Johnny Vegas and his woolly mun-keh sidekick when they made a comeback after the I.T.V. digital debacle to advertise P.G. Tips. Going back a long while, I still have fond memories of the British Gas privatisation campaign, "If you see Sid, tell him." It was indirect, far from glamourous and certainly not slick, but even now I haven't forgotten it. It didn't sell me many British Gas shares, because I was in primary school, but it was still good. I also find myself mourning the sad demise of the man from Del Monte. He may have had an unpleasant, lingering whiff of colonialism about him, but he did have a strong positive attitude. And lovely tinned peaches.

Looking back over a life spent bombarded by advertising reveals a lot. Iconic humour will sell a product, but creating icons is far from easy, which is why so many ads miss their mark. However hard he tries, Suggs from Madness will never be Captain Birdseye and a singing banker will never persuade me to take out a loan.

Absolutely

It was announced last week that Virgin Radio is soon going to be known as Absolute Radio, having been acquired by some new owners a while back. Listening to the station over the past few weeks I haven't been able to escape the constant bombardment of efforts designed to effectively manage the change. Amongst them were a series of little promos describing "what makes this radio station great, by the people that work here". I wasn't sure what reaction this was supposed to provoke in me. My first thought was that they were reminding me how much my life sucked. I don't have a really cool media job where I can just pop downstairs and see a gig while I'm having my teabreak. I've never met anyone famous in the lift. I'm not one of the great and the good who beavers away behind the scenes to make the eighties hour happen, thus bringing the delights of Aha to a wider audience. Well, I might as well give up now. Thanks, Virgin, for that little reminder. If you make a few changes to the radio station I listen to most, it's not really going to make my life any worse, is that what you're trying to tell me?

Naturally Virgin/Absolute radio care not for my personal rancour, broken dreams and unfulfilled ambitions. They have embarked on a fiendishly clever marketing strategy that works on a number of different levels. Firstly it works within the organisation concerned to reassure staff. The good folks that work at the station are, after all, the ones who are going to be affected most by changes in ownership, management and so on, so to get them publicly onside, talking about the happy aspects of their job, makes sense. It's like a big broadcasting hug - "don't quit guys, we love you!" It says that everything is going to be all right in a highly attractive manner. Face it, we all desire a bit of fame, and I'm willing to be that a good proportion of those working at radio stations, from the people that clean the lavs to the receptionists, harbour a few ambitions to actually be on the radio themselves. It's true "...all the stars who never were are parking cars and pumping gas...".

All those new radio stars definitely seem valued by the station management, because they've set up a blog where all staff can post their thoughts about work, change, running the station and so on. This blog is public and anyone, inside or outside the organisation, can read it. I really like this idea. Having worked in large-ish places where change used to happen via various twists and turns of subterfuge accompanied by gossip and rumour, this kind of candour is extremely refreshing. A lot of the things that are being said are interesting too, especially the discussions about playlists, branding and advertising. As a listener I'm well aware that I'm the target for all sorts of messages trying to sell me music, products, maybe a lifestyle even. As the possessor of an MA in Media and Culture I'm also aware that the way in which these messages are put across is changing. I spent a year researching the shift towards online news reporting as opposed to traditional media forms (hey, ma, ain't I clever?), so I particularly appreciated an article on the blog about about finding a place for old media like radio in a new media world. The author saw radio as providing the audience with key words to Google. This struck a chord with me because that's exactly how I found the blog in the first place. I heard something on air about Virgin changing, got interested, typed Virgin Radio into a search engine and eventually found a link to the blog. Now I'm further augmenting the advertising loop by blogging about the experience myself. So that's another way in which the "what's great about this radio station..." campaign worked - they've turned me into a willing soldier in their army. I'm listening, I'm talking about what's going on, and of course I'm not the only one.

The final, possibly most ingenious and subtle aspect of the campaign was that it made me think about what I like about the station. I can listen for sustained periods without getting annoyed by the music or what the presenters say. I enjoy the occasional moments when they play very bad rock, like Whitesnake and Aerosmith, because I can give public vent to what should be a very private passion and turn the radio up so I can sing along. I like the way in which Russ Williams can read out messages from sponsors or obvious advertising scripts without trying too hard or being over-enthusiastic, but still sounding respectful to whoever happens to be helping to pay his salary this week. It's a gift - you can tell he's just saying daft things because he has to, but the man comes across as a true professional. I don't much care for Christian O'Connell, but I think I grew out of oh-so-very-funny breakfast radio several years ago. It's the Today Programme all the way for me, these days, I'm afraid. Anyway, I'm starting to realise that overall I like the station and I'll keep on listening even if it's called something different. There are also bound to be a whole lot of people out there who are thinking the same thing too. So the slightly quirky bit of promotion has achieved its wider objective. I'm interested in what will happen in the future and I shall keep listening to find out what Absolute Radio is all about. And as I've now given them lots of publicity (no doubt my blog reaches millions of readers... well, I have a very loyal following in certain quarters, I'm sure... some people must be reading this, surely), I shall assume that they're sending me a nice big fat cheque in the post :-)

Trawling the Depths

It's true. It's not a spoof. There really is a programme on Channel Five called "Extreme Fishing with Robson Green".

Does he sing "Unchained Melody" whilst spearing carp in a volcano perhaps? Or maybe he's just got piranhas inside his waders?

Doing the Lambeth Walk

It's Lambeth Conference time again. Hundreds of Church of England bishops from all over the world have descended on Canterbury to spend two weeks doing holy things. Which is nice. They only get together once every ten years, so naturally they have lots of work to do and things to talk about.

The huge rifts that have opened up in the Established Church over women and gay priests have been receiving a lot of national media coverage. Faced with such a monumental news story on its doorstep, our BBC local news team initially showed a rare degree of insight, screening an interview with controversial gay cleric Gene Robinson on their flagship teatime television show "South East Today" when he was due to preach in Ashford (he has been pointedly excluded from the Lambeth Conference proper). However this week they returned to their usual stance of trying not to make waves. Evidently they shocked even themselves with their previous attempt at edgy topicality and they promptly ran back to the safe, warm, cuddly womb of bland vanilla news for the masses. Imagine the editorial meeting: Lambeth Conference is happening, it's the eve of a huge priestly protest about world poverty in London and the air around Canterbury is heady with religious debate - what angle shall we take on reporting this story? I know - let's do a report on bishops wives doing daily outdoor aerobics!

I really have no right to abandon myself to such unbecoming cynicism because the sad fact of the matter is that for me Lambeth Conference represents a series of funny memories and quirky episodes rather than anything deeply religious or political. The conference ten years ago was held (as it is once more in 2008) at the University of Kent, perched high on a hill above the city of Canterbury. Back then I was a young undergraduate there, about to enter my final year, with a summer job on campus. I remember the bishops descending on us, swarming around the bars and lecture theatres in a host of colourful robes and with very large crosses around their necks. Staff in the computing lab set up a "bishop cam" on one of the main thoroughfares and encouraged people to engage in bishop spotting on the internet. Looking back it seems like an utterly surreal experience, with us remaining students and academics set adrift in a sea of holy men.

I don't recall seeing any bishops or their spouses doing their daily physical jerks on the lawn outside the Physics lab, as they were on the local news programme, but I do remember that before the bishops turned up many, many hundreds of portaloos arrived. They seemed to be set up in every available space around the large university site. These were not just portaloos of the "bog standard" variety. They claimed to be "luxury" or "premium" lavatorial facilities. Intrigued by this I thought I might investigate them on one occasion when taken short as I walked across campus. I excitedly climbed the steps up to the loo, looking forward to spending a penny in style, only to beat a hasty retreat when I heard emanating from within the cabin what I can only describe as "holy muzak". These loos were equipped with some sort of sound system that played soothing choral music to the occupants. Deciding that they obviously weren't for use by the likes of me, I left to go elsewhere. As I recounted the tale to the (agnostic) boyfriend, he nodded sagely and said: "Ah, that's what happens when you're a bishop. You go to the loo and choirs of heavenly angels start to sing - it's how you know you've got a calling." I must make haste and phone the local BBC newsroom about that - a decade old tale mixing religion with toilet humour may be too much for them to resist.

Lambeth Conference 2008
Lambeth Conference 1998 - contains a link to the old bishop cam, but unfortunately it's now been taken down. The conference this year does however have an official cartoonist, who has a "tent cam" and a blog.

Delia Derbyshire

A few years ago I heard a play on Radio 4 called "Blue Veils and Golden Sands" which dramatised the life and work of Delia Derbyshire, so the recent discovery of some of her lost tapes interested me. Derbyshire was a leader in the field of electronic music who crafted sounds from within cascades of tape loops at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, among other places. She is probably best known for her contribution to the Dr Who theme, despite never being formally credited for it.

A Cambridge educated mathematician, Derbyshire fought to work in recording studios at a time when women just didn't do that sort of thing. There's a resonance in that for me. In all my years skirting the fringes of a radio career, back in my dim and distant youth, I could not escape the fact that audio broadcasting was very much a male business. This probably persists even now and thinking about it in the light of my subsequent postgraduate studies I believe that the intimacy of the medium is the key to explaining it. Radio and music get into your personal space in ways that other media cannot. Television and film are watched from afar on screens. There's a separation between the watcher and the watched. Sounds, by contrast, pour directly into our ears. There seems to be no barrier between the still, small voice broadcasting in the dark and our inner monologue. A particular piece of music is only a synapse away from affecting us on a deep emotional level. Sounds can get right inside your head and with almost alarming speed are capable of providing powerful sensory stimulation. In a patriarchal society, is it any wonder that those in influential positions would want to exclude women from participating in creating noise? It would be almost indecent - women should be seen and not heard.

The concept of Delia Derbyshire as a kind of feminist heroine also ties in with another reason why I admire her - her position as an unconventional genius. She seems to have been able to discover ways of working with sounds, even disparate vocal samples and fragments of noise and music, that others could not. She had, if you like, a unique kind of "audio vision". I love the idea of that singular, eccentric brilliance being barely tolerated by the powers that be at the BBC and yet producing work that was capable of winning widespread acclaim - even popularity. Now I know that talent is no respecter of gender boundaries, but I can't help but wonder if there was something of an element of feminine intuition in the way that Derbyshire was able to create music out of electronic pulses of sound. Was her female brain somehow more receptive to the possibility of harmony amidst the mathematical rules and equations of early computer science? Like Barbara McClintock, who took a fresh approach to Biology by studying the "lives" of individual cells and genes in close detail and thus went against the established male scientists in her field, perhaps Derbyshire brought a new way of seeing , or rather hearing, to the predominantly male radiophonic world that took electronic music in directions that it may not otherwise have taken.

It could be argued, of course, that to emphasise a particularly feminine difference in approach to electronica, broadcasting, mathematics or computers is simply to recycle an argument that men have been using for decades to keep women out of these spheres of creation - it's saying that women are different and thus they are incorrect or wrong. So to celebrate difference on a gender level could be opening oneself up to criticism. It might be better, then, to celebrate simply the "Delia Difference" - the pioneering work and continued influence of Delia Derbyshire that is now receiving a renewed interest as more or her recordings are coming to light.

Delia Derbyshire website

Holding the Baby

I am not a confident cuddler of babies. I watch some of those hospital reality shows and maternity ward documentaries with perplexed fascination, transfixed by people who march in and pick up nappy-clad small persons without a moment of hesitation. Whenever I meet friends who have recently become parents, there's always an awkward moment when they ask "Do you want to hold him/her?" And I invariably say no. I'm clumsy. I trip up, spill drinks, drop books, plates, vegetables and all sorts of other inanimate objects. I don't trust myself with ten pounds of wriggling, dribbling human being.

To be honest it goes deeper than that. I don't feel terribly comfortable holding other people's offspring because I feel like I'm being judged - by them and by society. It feels like a million eyes are on me and everyone is asking if I'm holding the baby in the right way and if it seems happy in my company. Is the baby drooling on me and how am I reacting to said drool? In short, am I maternal enough? Am I worthy of my status as a woman because I can demonstrate a basic understanding of the proto-mothering process? Frankly I think, and I assume that everyone else thinks, that I'm a bit of a failure when it comes to dealing with kids, however broody I might feel on occasions. So I try and avoid potential baby interaction situations. The future husband has, however, just acquired a new nephew, and in my position as future wife I suppose he's my nephew too. Thus with aunthood comes a new set of responsibilities.

So it came to pass that in a pub somewhere in North London a somewhat grumpy six week old ended up in my arms. We chatted for a bit. He seemed to like it when I talked to him. It held his attention and he grunted occasionally in reply. It was possibly the most intelligent conversation I'd had in days. Desperate to keep him occupied and stop him grizzling, I sang him a song. Apparently babies like being sung to, even if it's out of tune, so for tone-deaf me he was the ideal audience. He'd been a bit upset during lunch but now he was quiet and not crying, which I accepted as a small but welcome victory for me in my own personal "Help! I'm holding a baby!" war. Truth be told I was actually feeling pretty contented. Then, in the midst of all the constant baby-gurning, the fleeting expressions of "Where's my mum?" of "Have I got wind?" and "Shall I have a wee?" that crossed his face in rapid succession throughout our time together, he fixed me with his dark eyes, looked directly at me and smiled. Amongst the scattered fragments of babyness, the confusion of infanthood, I'm convinced that he did something purposeful and really quite wonderful. Who cares what the big people think - one small person judged me favourably and I rather liked it. I managed not to drop him on his head, too, so it was a good result all round.

Big Bang Theory

Apparently it's the Pope's birthday today. According to the BBC, he politely declined a gala birthday dinner hosted by George Bush, but there was still going to be a twenty one gun salute fired from the White House lawn in his honour. All I could think when I heard this was: "that sounds dangerous - I really hope they miss."

Shine a Light

Just been listening to Virgin Radio News and apparently the Olympic torch has been "distinguished" in Paris :-)

Virgin is pretty much the only music radio station I can listen to for any extended period of time and I do like it, but it has previously made me laugh in unintended ways. A presenter was heavily promoting a Bryan Adams gig once and was presumably trying to say how much he'd enjoyed seeing the Canadian rocker live - the trouble was he said "Ah, Bryan Adams, he's great; he never fails to disappoint."

However I don't think that anything yet beats the local radio travel reporter on Invicta FM several years ago, who had to warn drivers that a cattle truck had overturned on the motorway and a bullock had escaped. She said there was a bollock loose on the M20. Now that's certain to cause a traffic jam.

Going Bridal

I honestly never thought I'd ever be saying this: I'm getting married! A few weeks ago there was a bit of a fuss involving a nice hotel, a shiny ring and a curry, and somehow the boyfriend became the fiance. After ten years of telling me he wasn't really interested in marriage, he surprised me by proposing and I surprised both of us by saying yes. So now we're engaged and planning to marry next year. It's all rather nice, really.

My beautiful, shiny ring had to go back to the jeweller's to be resized, so in a state of giddy excitement I went to pick it up one lunchtime, walking straight out of the shop and into the newsagent to buy a bridal magazine. I don't usually buy any magazines. I'm not very girly and I'm not really interested in celebrity gossip or fashion. I certainly haven't spent all of my thirty years dreaming of the perfect wedding dress, so why I should want a bridal magazine I don't really know. It just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. Maybe I was just blinded by the bling, somehow hypnotised by the new diamonds on my finger. Anyway, I bought it and I enjoyed reading it, especially looking at other people's real life weddings, but I couldn't quite believe the sheer amount of marketing I was exposing myself to.

There are many strange and bizarre products being churned out for the bridal market. I'm certain I can live without most of them, especially crepe paper bells in my choice of wedding colours, matching paper doves and a "lucky sixpence" garter. I've seen so many adverts for personalised serviettes that can be embossed with our names and wedding date, though, that I'm starting to think they're a good idea (much to the fiance's disgust). There's even a company that will print a photo of the happy couple onto a candle. Now I can think of a few people who'd enjoy watching us slowly melt over the course of an evening, but I don't think that we'll be inviting them to our wedding, so we're not going to be getting any of those.

Bridal beauty is another concept that I'm struggling to get a handle on. Of course I want to look nice on our big day, but I don't think I need "205 hot hair ideas". I was planning on brushing it, but that's about it. I would quite like a tiara, mind you, because when else am I going to get the chance to wear one? The fiance couldn't quite understand this, so I told him he could wear one too if he wanted. He seemed quite keen. There seems to be a lot written about perfumes, too. I really hoped to walk down the aisle without B.O., but I've not been giving a great deal of thought to creating a signature scent style for the day. As well as signature bridal scents, there are also a bewildering array of colour themes, table favours, marquees, bouquets and even wedding insurance policies to choose from. Eloping to somewhere remote and using a couple of strangers picked randomly off the street as witnesses to our wedding ceremony does look very attractive.

Baby, you can drive my car

Entering my thirties initially seemed like quite a big thing, so I tried to prepare myself for a bit of a psychological adjustment. As it happens it hasn't been too bad. I'm older - there's nothing I can do about it, so I might as well just go with it. I've spent several years underachieving, so that sense of not fulfilling my potential is nothing new :-) There is one thing, though, that I haven't managed to avoid - the baby thing. I've never thought of myself as a particularly maternal type, but suddenly there are kids everywhere in my social circle. Almost imperceptibly it crept up on me. People started having babies of their own or acquiring stepchildren, nieces and nephews. Suddenly I was required to shop at the Early Learning Centre on a fairly regular basis. Occasionally I began to feel broody.

Apparently this is quite a common occurrence upon turning thirty. Your peers begin to breed, your parents start to drop hints about wanting grandchildren and then you read one of those articles about fertility declining dramatically at the age of thirty-five. Before you know it you're waking up in a cold sweat, wondering if you should just nudge the boyfriend and start to get jiggy with it there and then. Luckily there is a cure for all of this. You should make haste and borrow a car.

Let me explain: the boyfriend and I bought a sensible hatchback a long time ago. It's a great car because it's really practical. We've fitted camping equipment, sofas, a dining table, my rather less than athletic mum and all sorts of other stuff in the back with no trouble. It's been reasonably reliable and we've been perfectly happy with it for years. When we moved over the summer it was a godsend. So when our friends were moving flats recently it seemed like a sensible idea to lend it to them for a while, as they drive a slightly less practical vehicle. In return they let us drive their car - a Mazda MX5. On the weekend when we were in possession of said MX5, the boyfriend got called into work to fix something. Purely in the spirit of supportiveness (and not because I like the idea of posing in a sporty coupe) I decided to accompany him. So, there we were, driving around Docklands in bright winter sunshine, with the top down and Verdi's Requiem blaring out of the CD player. The heated leather seat was warming my bum to perfection and my pashmina was fluttering attractively in the gentle breeze. The car was so much fun! The car only had two seats! The annoying yet persistent ticking of my biological clock was silenced in an instant.

I highly recommend the Mazda MX5 experience to anyone, broody or otherwise. Escape the tyranny of biology through the wonders of automotive engineering. Just a word of warning though - put the top up before you drive through the Blackwall Tunnel. The fumes aren't nice. Mind you, they probably don't do a lot for your fertility, either.

Au Revoir Twenties! (Part Deux)

Let me start with a little romantic tale. A few days after Christmas, we dropped my mother back at her house and decided to drive to Bluewater to check out the sales. Negotiating post-festive traffic on the M2, the boyfriend (the wonderful boyfriend, actually) asked me if there was any particular restaurant I'd like to go to for dinner on my birthday, which was fast approaching. I was mulling it over when he said "How about Les Cinq Saveurs d'Anada, where we had such a good meal on holiday?" I thought he was just talking hypothetically until he told me we were leaving for Paris in a week.

Les Cinq Saveurs is not just a veggie restaurant, it's a full on macrobiotic festival. My French is pretty bad, but I swear the label on the beer I had last time I was there promised that it was biodynamic, harvested at a certain phase of the moon and had some sort of friendly bacteria in it. It was such a pleasure to find a really good vegetarian restaurant, especially in Paris where meat is loved so greatly. As a veggie, even though I'm not super-strict, I find myself eating the compromise dish on the menu quite a lot - the cheesy pasta or the omelette, so I love having a wide choice (mind you, we can't eat at such places too often - the boyfriend's stomach tends to react violently to too many beans - but every now and again is better than never). So I was really looking forward to going back to Les Cinq Saveurs, but unfortunately when we got to Paris we found they were shut for their annual holiday. We ended up going to another, random vegetarian place we found on one of our walks instead.

Le Grenier de Notre Dame is a tiny place, rather appropriately established in 1978 (like me). The food turned out to be really good. There were even some extremely healthy looking toasted seeds served as a snack with our champagne apperitif. I rather liked the juxtaposition of health and decadence caught up in that. For my main course I had an immense vegetarian paella, with lots of black olives and cashew nuts, while the boyfriend had a vegetable cassoulet. We topped it all off with mousses - he raspberry, me chocolate. Joy of joys, I cannot describe to you my excitement when these arrived at the table presented in the most gloriously kitsch manner, topped off with plastic palm trees!

Resisting the temptation to hula down the steep spiral staircase in honour of the fantastic plastic trees, we left the restaurant. Paris around the start of the new year was a beautiful place. The Christmas lights, trees and decorations were still up everywhere, there was an ice rink in front of the town hall and from billboards on every street corner the Mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, was wishing us a Bonne Annee. The French make a big deal of Epiphany (6th January - the day after my birthday) so everybody was still in a festive mood. Full of champagne, a rather nice vin d'Alsace and lots of vegetarian food, and buoyed up by the jovial city atmosphere, we decided to go to a famous Parisian jazz club. Le Caveau de La Huchette has a bar on the ground floor, but we wanted to be downstairs in the cellar. The place was full, absolutely crowded with people and very hot. For a long time we just hung around on the stairs, listening to the band play some unfamiliar but frantic swing and be-bop. If we had been at a similar place in England I reckon some officious health and safety person would have told us we couldn't stand there, I'm sure of it, but France is different so we could soak up the atmosphere without being molested.

Revived with cocktails from the bar and taking advantage of the break between sets, we found a better perching place near the stage and the dancefloor. Once the band started up again it was hard to know who to watch - them or the people dancing. There were teenagers, middle aged couples, bald men, handsome besuited men and one old lady in a hat dancing on her own. It was frenetic, but everybody was totally concentrated on their moves. Some sprinkled the floor with talcum powder to stop friction getting in the way of their feet while others made serious looking hand gestures to their partners, seeming to indicate which way they should whirl them around next. Certain couples patrolled their own particular section of floor, cutting off any potential incursions by others with a steely glare. The energy of the whole place was just phenomenal and I had the most amazing evening there.

It all started to wind down at around 2a.m. The boyfriend told the trumpeter how good he was in broken, mojito-tinged French. They seemed to understand each other well. After such a full day I should have been staggering back up the hill again to Rue Mouffetard, but the journey didn't seem difficult at all. Maybe I flew. Anyway we made it back to bed and sleep, but just a little sleep. The following day was the first Sunday in the month, meaning that all French national museums in Paris were free to enter. Free being my favourite price, I was keen to take advantage of this. So in a happy, sleepy, post-birthday fog we took on the Musee d'Orsay, having got there early to avoid the queues that had put us off going there before. It was good. They had a book about Rodin and hands in the bookshop, too. All things considered, it was a great way to commence my thirties. I just hope the rest of the coming decade is going to be as good!

Au Revoir Twenties! (Part Un)

Just being in Paris for my thirtieth birthday was wonderful, but the day had a few particular highlights too. Firstly there was breakfast, or rather there were breakfasts (plural). Having begun the day with a healthy aspect, eating fresh fruit and yoghurt from the Rue Mouffetard market, I decided that old ladies such as myself need additional sustenance to get them through the day. Consequently I had a pain au chocolat from the bakery "La Fournil de Mouffetard". Meltingly soft, buttery pastry and a not-too-sweet chocolate centre set me up for the day's activities.

The boyfriend and I spent lots of time just walking around the Parisian streets. The weather was grey and cold, but not too rainy. We decided to give the ferris wheel in the Tuileries a miss (I suffer from motion sickness and he doesn't like heights - the combination of vomit and terror wouldn't have been a birthday treat), but I did get some good photographs of the Louise Bourgeois "Welcoming Hands" sculptures in the park, watery against a menacing cloudy sky. We ended up stopping at a cafe near the Pont de l'Alma for coffee, toasted sandwiches and warmth, but mostly we just wandered around arm-in-arm, trying to do the city justice by looking our romantic best.

In the afternoon we stumbled upon the Delacroix museum. Eugene Delacroix was a painter and he spent the last years of his life creating murals in one of the chapels of the church of St. Sulpice. We saw these when we went to a free concert in the church last time we were in Paris. Bruckner's fourth symphony dragged a little, especially as the seats were very uncomfortable, but it was free and the murals were extraordinary - a religious theme combined with furious brush strokes gives them an arresting power. Visiting the museum we got a glimpse of the man behind the art. There were surprisingly few actual paintings by him there, but there were many of him by his friends and lots of work by his contemporaries. It was housed in a tiny building where Delacroix once lived and worked. He seemed to have been quite a sickly chap and spent a lot of time being ill in bed there. The rooms have changed little since he was alive and the whole place was very atmospheric. The boyfriend and I, ever alert for interior design inspiration in our capacity as new home owners, were rather taken with a red velvet chaise longue in the hallway. Sadly visitors were not allowed to sit on it. There was a sign in French, German and English telling you not to, but maybe if you were Japanese or Russian you could have pleaded ignorance and got away with it - who can tell?

After the museum I was keen to see what was going on at the Pompidou Centre. When we got there the queue to get in was horrendous, so we just hung about outside and watched a magician as the day started to grow dusky. He had a French techno/trance soundtrack on his iPod and a tame pigeon (elle s'appelle Julie) whom he whispered to periodically and tenderly wrapped up in a scarf against the evening chill. He did some tricks with bits of rope, children and people's shopping. In the end he made l'oiseau Julie disappear. He had a nice line in multi-lingual humour, too. He asked us all, in French, for a couple of euros at the end of the show, then said in English "for the English in the audience, that will be five euros please." Ah, yes, we are the nationality everybody likes to mock. Probably rightly so, acutally.

Climbing back up towards the Pantheon, the Quartier Mouffetard-Contrescarpe and our little apartment, I reflected on what a pleasant day it had been. Then I realised I was a bit knackered from all the walking, so I took an executive decision to stop at Le Petit Cardinal for hot chocolate and beer. Slowly sipping my chocolat chaud while the boyfriend savoured his pression of Leffe, I smiled at the fortuitous presence of such a good cafe halfway up the almighty hilly street on our homeward route. Full of chocolatey goodness, I looked forward to the evening ahead.

Paris, je t'aime

I spent my thirtieth birthday in Paris. Ever since our holiday there last year I had been vaguely pining to return, saying every now and then how much I would like to go back, but knowing that the prospect was fairly remote. The purchase of the flat and the general day-to-day business of life seemed to prevent it from happening in the near future. Then my wonderful boyfriend surprised me with a weekend trip. He was doubly seduced - by me (nearly ten years ago now) and by some very tempting Eurostar offers that emerged when the new St. Pancras and Ebbsfleet stations opened.

Thus we returned to the same little apartment where we had stayed the previous March, on Rue Mouffetard in the fifth arrondissement. From the moment we took a walk down the street to sip a chocolat chaud in my favourite little cafe (Le Petit Cardinal, just opposite the Cardinal Lemoine metro station) we slipped effortlessly back into Parisian life. I'm not really a city person. London is okay but I have no great affection for it. I have a romantic attachment to Paris, though, that draws on all kinds of disparate threads, from the sublime to the utterly ridiculous. Take, for example, this thought that struck me whilst rumbling through the metro: French women are not yet subject to the tyranny of the hair straighteners. I see kindred heads everywhere in Paris - long, flowing locks left to wave and kink to their hearts content, unconstrained by product or pin. Sometimes in England I feel positively baroque because of my untamed tresses, violently doing their own thing amidst acres of plastic barbie hair, flat-ironed to within an inch of existence. La Belle Femme in Paris seems to know there's more to life than a hair-do. It's the same with shoes. Battered old Converse baseball boots are common on Parisian streets, even with skirts and smartish dress. As such women in the French capital seem to stride out lustfully, going forth into the day with vigour. In London the streets are full of English women tottering and limping through life in shoes with daft heels and pointy toes. I like comfy shoes. Paris is my kind of place.

There's a genuine sense of being oneself that fills the air in Paris. Even the practicalities seem geared up to letting people live their own lives with ease. The shops open late. The post offices are open until seven in the evening, so you can do all your necessaries on your way home from your daily perambulations. Walking home at 2a.m. on the morning after my birthday, several cafes were still open, merrily serving coffee, chocolate and warm milk with vanilla. The cafe culture as a whole is a marvel and so far removed from the British model that it's probably the thing I miss most when I come home. I can sit down with a hot chocolate, the boyfriend can have a beer, a nice waiter brings it to the table and we can watch the world go by while we drink it (at Le Petit Cardinal, the view includes a fire station, patisserie and a pedestrian crossing that cyclists/moped riders often ignore - a people watchers' paradise!) Starbucks just isn't the same.

It shouldn't be forgotten, too, that Paris is a breathtakingly beautiful place. Each day we were there this time we walked by the Seine. From the towers of Notre Dame to the shining golden dome of Les Invalides, and of course everything else besides, the views are amazing. The parks, especially the Jardin de Luxembourg with its ardent chess players, and the Tuilleries, with the Louise Bourgeois statues of hands, and all of the iconic sights like the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur (but maybe not the Tour Montparnasse - nowhere is perfect) provide a backdrop for a current of culture that I've not felt anywhere else. The art galleries, the concerts in churches and the fierce debate in cafes, the free public bicycles for hire and the entire feel of the city just draws me in every time. I honestly just love the place and I hope to go back again and again.